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>>7295I will again argue against rejecting all of Lysenko's based on probable errors in a few of his experiments. Modern epigenetics has essentially vindicated the Michurinist approach to heredity, but it is inadequate to judge Lysenko's contributions in the context of it or even compare it to later Mendelists with the tools of molecular biology at their disposal.
Here is an excerpt from the 1942 issue of Nature demonstrating the importance of his phasic theory of development:
>Soviet Scientific Work on Potatoes>A LONG cable has been sent by Prof. Lysenko, president of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, to Sir John Russell, chairman of the Anglo-Soviet Scientific Collaboration Committee, describing recent results of Soviet scientific work on the potato crop which in the U.S.S.R., as in Great Britain, is now of very great importance as human food. The message begins by stating that the Odessa Institute of Genetics and Selection, of which he was for a long time director and where much of this work was begun, had been evacuated before the Germans captured the city. The investigations now being made under Lysenko's general direction by various scientific bodies, like all other scientific investigations in the U.S.S.R., are exclusively directed to the war effort ; in this case to help the Collective and State farms increase the output of food and raw materials. Genetics, he says, is the science dealing with the nature of the living organism and its reactions to various environmental influences at different stages of its development. The better the laws of inheritance are understood, the easier it is to govern the nature of the plant organism and modify it in any desirable direction, thereby creating new plants possessing characters useful to man.>War conditions have made it necessary greatly to increase the area under potatoes in the U.S.S.R. because they furnish more food and industrial raw material per acre than any other crop. The difficulty arose, however, that supplies of 'seed' were insufficient to allow of much expansion. The shortage was overcome by using potato tops in place of seed, and methods for their preparation and planting were elaborated. In 1942 a total of 150,000 ha were thus planted in various parts of the south-east and centre of the U.S.S.R. and the yields were not inferior to those of potatoes planted in the usual way, and in regions where ring rot is prevalent plants grown from tops were less liable to the disease than those grown from seed. During the winter, extensive preparations are being made to collect potato seed material from Government and public vegetabl stores and from private houses to ensure considerable enlargement of next year's potato area, and meanwhile the scientific workers are continuing work on collection of the tops and on their storage and preparation for planting. A request has been sent to Lysenko for details of the methods adopted.
>Another method of increasing production in the southern regions, based on Lysenko's own work, is to arrange for two sowings of potatoes in one season. The old method was to sow in April, but the high June temperature led to poor crops of small tubers. The difficulty was overcome by planting in July; the crop is not large but as seed it is much better than the original seed, and, planted in the following April, it gives considerably higher yields. Seed for the July planting, however, cannot in the hot southern regions be kept over from the previous year ; on the other hand, the freshly gathered seed does not readily sprout ; a period of rest is necessary. Investigation showed that the length of this period depends on external conditions, particularly on the extent to which air can gain access to the plant nutrients contained in the tuber. Access of air is prevented by the skin, and when this is removed sprouting rapidly occurs. The technical problems associated with the large-scale application of this simple device have been worked out, and during the summer of 1942 experiments were made on collective farms and individual plots in irrigated areas of Central Asia, the results of which will enable the potato area of the southern regions to be greatly expanded in 1943. >In conclusion, Prof. Lysenko stated that the problem now confronting us is to make the utmost use of our knowledge of the laws governing the development of plants so as to obtain the largest possible yields of the best quality crops from our fields.